I need basic help to understand “help”

  • Hi, I keep reading posts and documentation that make a few asumptions about my knowledge of how wordpress works, and i’m feeling completely lost.
    For example, reading about breadcrumbs, no one bothered to say where to put the function till the 7th post or so and then, I do not have a “my-hacks.php” ??
    My question is:
    do I create one? or do I have to download it from somewhere and “install it” somehow. In any case i suppose I’ll have to “Include” it one the templates I use. Is it not so?
    Sorry for such silly questions but I keep reading docs that take this things for granted, documentation asumes I know where or how to put things ??
    I’ve only been playing around with wp for a day, by the way what is the difference between a hack and a “plugin”.
    Is there somewhere were I can get a “general picture” of the basics so I can understand what the wiki and the docs are talking about?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • A ‘my-hacks.php’ is a file that sits in the same directory as your main ‘index.php’
    A basic my-hacks consists only of this:
    <?php
    ?>
    and nothing else.
    You paste the given code in the gap. You also check Options > Misc – at the bottom of that page, check the box for ‘legacy my-hacks’.
    Do check before you use a my-hacks ‘hack’ that a plugin is not available – they are generally easier to use.
    —————-
    ‘my-hacks.php’ is a leftover from when wp did not have plugins. They are essentially the same thing, the difference being that plugins are files you upload, whereas a hack is code you have to paste into place.
    —————-
    Somewhere to look ….. I don’t honestly know, but, it’s not a race, learn bits as you go and don’t go thinking that you can’t use wp until you know lots of xhtml, css, php and anything else – you don’t.
    You can forget php (I’ve been using wp since January and I still know none) and there is help around for everything else. It’s a learning curve but a gentle one, and post as much as you need to here.
    Don’t forget that when you play with your blog to change how it looks, your posts and comments are safe, and when you do try things, remember that mistakes will happen at times, but we’ve all been there, and whatever it is will be easy to fix.

    Thread Starter tomatoma

    (@tomatoma)

    Hi podz,
    Thank you so much, I was feeling quite frutrated yesterday not understanding documentation files.
    I’ve been for two days with wp and everything came along very nicely, code is “self-documented” and the first steps where really easy, and then I lost all afternoon triying to understand how to do a couple of “easy things” and got angry with myself.
    I don’t think i’ve seen a plugin for “breadcrumbs”, but I’ll take a look, fix it and then come back to ask more basic questions ??
    Thanks!!!

    breadcrumb plugin.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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